FREE EATS - for you and your animals (Kudzu)

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Countryside : One Thread

Doing some research, I came across a way of feeding your family and your livestock for free, and simultaneously gaining the undying goodwill of your neighbors - kudzu.

According to the various articles and sites I scanned, kudzu is a non-bloating green feed that cattle and goats (and presumably sheep and chickens) ADORE. The article I read said that if you want it to remain a perrineal crop for goats, you actually have to rotate them or they will eradicate it from overgrazing! It is in the legume family, so use that as a basis for guessing the nutritional make-up, although The Kudzu Book (the name of the author escapes me, but could be easily found) may have such stats.

On the people side of the issue, the leaves can be used like spinach (the local coffee shop offers a kudzu garden quiche that is purported to be absolutely delicious - I didn't have the cashe to try it when I saw it, but you can bet I will next time). The leaves can also be used for veggie wrappers, like cabbage leaves, and can be dropped in deep-frying oil to make a potato chip-like snack. There are many other ways of preparing the leaves, use your imagination or get one of the many recipe books out there on the subject. (See if the pigs will eat it. There is delicious irony in the thought of kudzu-wrapped pork rolls!) It also produces a podded bean, but I could not find a reference to its edibility (probably yes, the rest of the plant is edible) or its palatability. Anyone know?

The flowers can be made into jelly (pack flowers into jars and cover with boiling water, let set over night, then "jelly" the juice like you would any other), ditto wine (from said juice), and other juice-type foods like jello and the such.

The roots make a fine starch when pounded in water and the starch allowed to settle out. You can use it like arrowroot, and it doesn't leave a "starchy" flavor like cornstarch can. The roots are deep and plentiful.

The vines make an excellent basket, strong as all get out. Hubby and I, knowing next to nothing about basket making, made a rather handy kitchen/garden basket one day just fooling around. That was over 6 years ago, and despite being left outside for long periods of time, allowing forgotten produce to rot in it, and similar neglect, it shows its wear only in a few broken strands of vine hear and there, and one or two pieces have come undone at the ends. It has never broken through the bottom, despite egregious overloading, and the cats find it inordianately comfortable to sleep in. Many craft and sale items can be made from this material, and you can tag on a little note about how buying your procuct helps keep this tenacious invasive at bay!

Your neighbors will be more than happy to support your homesteading ventures in kudzu (they may actually pay you to let your goats "overgraze" the area, if you play it right), and there is plenty to go around. So eat, drink, and be merry.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), August 18, 2001

Answers

I've often thought that kudzu should make a good feed as well and my 1956 edition of Feeds and Feeding speaks highly of it, even going so far as to state that hogs could even gain weight (slightly) on kudzu pasture alone without any other feed. For all of that though I don't think I've ever heard or seen of anyone actually using kudzu for forage or hay in other than the smallest amounts. God knows it grows prolifically enough down here in the Deep South but no one seems to do anything with it but damn it for being here!

I've thought about experimenting with it myself but there's none growing on the property we're buying and I'm afraid of being seen planting it. Sounds like a way to find myself as the guest of honor at a necktie party...

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), August 18, 2001.


You plant kudzu, and your neighbors will hang you from the nearest tree. It takes over EVERYthing.

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), August 18, 2001.

I'm just curious.... is there no way to contain kudzu? It sounds like a great plant, but the pictures I've seen, and the stories I've heard are downright frightening! Since I'm not from the South, I must plead ignorance on the subject, and would appreciate info! Kudzu sounds like it would be great to plant for pigs if it could maybe be contained and harvested for them. Is this a possibility? Do rabbits like it?

-- Cheryl in KS (cherylmccoy@rocketmail.com), August 19, 2001.

OK, I give up. What the heck is kudzu? I guess I should know this already. Must be time to hit the search engine. :)

-- Kathleen (krob777@msn.com), August 19, 2001.

Goats will contain kudzu, but only for as long as they live there. Kudzu is the vine that makes gigantic green monsters out of trees, telephone poles, etc in the south. In the summer, it can grow 1 inch per HOUR. It will not only grow up a tree, but back down and back up and back down, until the tree is literally pulled down by the spring- loaded tension in the coiled vines. Don't worry, northerners, its coming! Some have been sighted up in the Mass. area, and it's only a matter of time before a cold resistant gene mutates and kudzu becomes a national problem.

One hint for feed baling: cut low and bale high, they say, otherwise it will tangle in your baler.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), August 19, 2001.



Let's see, Kudzu, a green, noneradicable, fast growing, long lived vine that will take over telephone poles, fences, houses (yes it does, one only has to stop mowing and move out for a couple of years and you will see a green lump in the middle of what used to be a yard!)and anything else in it's path. One day I had a very rude customer come to my old farm and as she was turning her nose up at this and that, she exclaimed how beautiful the vine was running along my neighbor's fence and wanted to know if she could have a "cutting". Well she was from up north and I am from down south and it wouldn't have been right to not maintain my southern hospitality, so I got her a cutting. She was going to plant it on her back fence, which incidentally joined two other neighbor's fences. I sincerely hope that she still enjoys her "vine" as much as I enjoyed giving it to her. To all those who want to plant kudzu, come south my friends, and take a long look at the fields where the "government" had farmers plant it. All you can see is a sea of vines. Worse than bindweed, coffee weed, and all the others put together! And my goats won't touch it unless they have nothing else to eat.

-- Cindy (colawson@mindspring.com), August 19, 2001.

Soni, kudzu was brought to us from another country where they had ruminants that would keep it in check. We don't have the same animals here and it isnt a preferred food. Not having enough natural animals feeding on it, it quickly gets out of control.

Don't take this wrong but I hope you don't live anywhere near me if you plant this.

I have seen in parts of Batesville, AR where this plant covers everything and nothing gets rid of it.

It won't only be your neighbors that hang you but the whole community.

Good luck to you I hope you think carefully about this.

-- Wynema Passmore (nemad_72039@yahoo.com), August 19, 2001.


Gary over at goatworld.com is an authority on this stuff. He does have goats to help control this, I am going to send him your info Soni, not sure if he has heard he can eat the stuff also! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), August 19, 2001.

Read about kudzu:

http://www.alltel.net/~janthony/kudzu/

-- ~Rogo (rogo2020@yahoo.com), August 19, 2001.


Ah yes. The mean green monster. The mile-a-minute vine. The vine that ate the south. Kudzu (Pueria Lobata) has become quite a problem for over 7 million acres of the United States. The federal government (finally) declared it a noxious weed in 1998 after they had been the one responsible for bringing it here in the late 1800's and paying farmers to plant it up to the 1950's.

As much of this stuff as there is you'd think people would know more about it but it really has remained somewhat of a mystery. So I'll tell you what I know about it and you can go from there.

As a food source for people, yes, it can be eaten. There are quite a number of kudzu festivals where this stuff is fried and eaten. Jams and jellies are made from it, something I tried once and rendering the juice from the blooms for me turned out to be such a stinky process that I vowed to never attempt it again at the insistent urging of my wife. Our house stunk for a week!

Believe this or not, kudzu is used for medicinal purposes to some extent, primarily in the orient from where it originated. There are claims that using brewing and drinking kudzu tea will help to curb alcoholic cravings, and smooth over anxiety attacks. It is "supposed" to give a feeling of overall tranquility though I find that hard to believe since it has brought me nothing but alot of grief in our situation.

Now onto using kudzu as goat feed. I know thereare quite a few people who think that kudzu makes a great good feed but there are a fewthings to ponder before planting it. Mainly that it is not as good a feed source as one might think. I'd have to dig through my notes for the specifics but the calcium to phosphorus ratio on kudzu is not desireable. If you are feeding kudzu to bucks, be on the lookout for sudden cases of urinary calculi.

That's only one drawback. The other drawback is that goats will wipe out all kudzu growth in a matter of days (depending on the size of the infestation and number of goats). Sure, bringing goats into a kudzu infested area will help control (not eradicate) kudzu in the short term. Over a short period of time they will browse every green kudzu leave and stem in site. This leaves the root and vine network of kudzu intact for the most part.

As stated in a previous post, if rotational browsing can be part of the plan, this will give the eaten kudzu vines a chance to revegetate rather quickly. Some areas are more conducive to kuzu growth than others - that is not really the problem.

The problem lies in that kudzu does set down a deep root network and robs the soil of nutrients that other plants should and could be using. In short, it smothers out all the natural flora and sets up house in the soil where it can remain dormant for long periods of time. As it was once used to control soil erosion and "supposed" to help the area soil to retain certain nutrients, later government studies found this to false.

So think of this. You plant a "crop" of kudzu for the purpose of feeding your goats. A crop that will be quickly consumed but has set up house and made it nearly impossible for you to plant anything else. That's just not practical. Planting a good mixed grassy alfalfa is a far better strategy (and more controllable) than giving your land to kudzu just to feed your goats for a short time (because you'd be having to rotate them anyway).

But for those that have kudzu growing, go for it. Goats and sheep will eat it. Cattle and horses will eat it. Rabbits will eat it to some extent as well. Not sure about swine. This method of control at least lets you see the soil from which it sprouts and when you can get it under control to that extent, you're making progress. But keep in mind that by conventional methods, it takes many years to fully eradicate the root system (if at all).

Weed killers such as Round Up have simply done very little for us. Tordon K works well as does Transline (like the power companies use to control weeds on easements). But these herbicides leave residues that you certainly do not want your goats to ingest. It basically leaves the Stalin method of the "scorched earth" policy. And the funny thing is that burning kudzu only serves to temporarily eradicate the vegetation at the surface. One week later you'll see tiny green shoots stretching skyward again.

There is good news though. The Stoneville, MS extension of the ARS has developed a fungus that is 100% effective on kudzu within days. I do not know when the availability of this product will be but rest assured that help is on the way. This was developed in lieu of introducing the species of bugs and insects that naturally destroy kudzu in the orient. Somehow I don't feel that would be a good option. I mean they already have brought one pest here - kudzu. Bringing another pest here to control the first pest is ludicrous. What will those pests devour as well as kudzu?

You may want to check out my web site at http://www.goatworld.com/articles for articles relative to kudzu and the menace we have been facing here in Southwest Missouri for the past few years.

Just this year I was instrumental in getting the State of Missouri to finally add kudzu to the noxious weed list meaning that landowners now have the duty of controlling and subsequently trying to eradicate this pest.

In our case our neighbors have refused to perform any control of the kudzu vines that originate from their property onto ours. We have lost several trees to this pest and it wasn't until I took action that we got it under control - at least on our side. It's not the kudzu I blame as much as I do the neighbors and their lack of scruples to control something that has devalued my property. It is socially acceptable to mow your yard to keep a nice, neat appearance. I feel it should be socially acceptable to keep your growth off of your neighbors land. Common courtesy is really the rootcause of all my frustrations with this weed.

Best regards,

Gary Pfalzbot



-- Gary Pfalzbot (gary@goatworld.com), August 20, 2001.



And then I start wondering what ELSE that fungus will take out . . . The track record on introductions, as you all noted, is abysmal!

-- Joy F [in So. Wisconsin] (CatFlunky@excite.com), August 20, 2001.

Don't worry, I have no intention of actually planting the stuff (I can't run that fast!) Just trying to use up what we have before buying what we don't!

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), August 20, 2001.

Being all my life down here in the Deep South I'm not unfamiliar with kudzu. Never tried to eat or physic myself with it so I'll leave that to others. I wouldn't suggest going out and actually planting any but if you have it growing on your property already and have livestock then it would be an excellent idea to use it as the resource that it is.

Of course you'll have to manage the grazing of animals on the kudzu but then you have to do that in fields of the finest clover or any other pasture plant. Just so many animals in so small an area for a given period of time then rotate then to another grazing area to give the previous one time to rest and recover. Of course if you have a sufficiently large area that the animals you have aren't going to overgraze it then it's not necessary but most of us aren't so fortunate. If you want to wipe out the kudzu simply intensify the grazing and shorten the rest periods. Eventually you'll cause the vines to use up the stored minerals and energy in the roots and they'll die of exhaustion. Kudzu is mostly a problem on land that isn't being actively cultivated or grazed so that there isn't anything to check its rampant growth.

A perennial legume that can be safely grazed is a good thing and there's not a big selection of them to be had. Here in North Florida alfalfa grows poorly, clovers are primarily a winter crop and most of the legumes to be had are annuals so while I wouldn't go and plant kudzu I wouldn't look upon it as a plague if it were already there, at least not in the areas that I want to graze animals in. For myself, I'm investigating using perennial peanuts which seems to be a promising avenue of approach.

={(Oak)-

-- Live Oak (oneliveoak@yahoo.com), August 21, 2001.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ